Executive Education designs customized program to match Dynegy business model

March 19, 2009 - There are many ways the Jones School’s Executive Education
Department customizes a curriculum to fit a company’s needs. With
Dynegy, however, the goals for participants and the organization as a
whole went beyond the classroom.

Barbara Reyna, Director, Organizational Development and Learning
Solutions at Dynegy, explains, “Of course we want to create better
leaders, have them apply what they’ve learned, but we also need a
strategy to sustain the organization’s momentum once people return to
work.”

With that in mind, Executive Education worked closely with the
appropriate executive team at Dynegy to develop and design three,
two-day modules in High Performance Teams, Effective Leadership, and
Finance and Accounting. The programs began at the end of 2008 and will
continue to run through the spring and then again in the fall of 2009.
“I can’t say enough about how well it’s worked for us,” Reyna raves.
“It’s a great partnership.”

The culture at Dynegy is all about teamwork. Every year, the company
recognizes employees who exemplify the Guiding Principles—honesty,
integrity and doing the right things with an expectation that the right
things will happen.

With about 60 participants from cross-functional teams and plants
across the country, the program modules build teamwork, too. “Since
most of our business is in the field,” Reyna says, “Creating
relationships is vital. Outside of the faculty, we’re just trying to
learn from each other.”

Jones School faculty experts Brian Rountree and James Weston
presented the Finance and Accounting module and Brent Smith, Associate
Dean of Executive Education, taught both High Performance Teams and
Effective Leadership modules.

Through its subsidiaries, Dynegy Inc. produces and sells electric
energy, capacity and ancillary services in key U.S. markets. The power
generation portfolio consists of more than 18,000 megawatts of
baseload, intermediate and peaking power plants fueled by a mix of
natural gas, coal and fuel oil. The company employs 1,900 people
nationwide.